Pre-Crash Safety (PCS) systems have been realized which work to reduce or avoid damage to an own vehicle caused by collision with a target, such as another vehicle, a pedestrian, or a road structure present ahead in a direction of travel of the own vehicle. The PCS system determines a time-to-collision that is a time it is expected to take for the own vehicle to collide with the target based on a relative distance between the own vehicle and the target, a relative speed to the target, and a relative acceleration to the target and then warns a driver in the own vehicle of approach to the target using a warning device or actuate a brake system of the own vehicle.
The PCS system may detect an iron plate, such as a manhole cover, as the target. Such a type of iron plate does not obstruct the traveling of the own vehicle. If it is treated as a target to be managed by the warning device or the braking device, its operation will be unnecessary.
There is a vehicle control apparatus, as taught in Japanese Patent First Publication No. 2012-215489, which is designed to determine whether a detected target is an obstacle which causes an obstruction to traveling of an own vehicle or not. The vehicle control apparatus determines whether the detected object is the obstacle or not using a reflection intensity of a wave reflected from the target.